methane v1 by ricknight

According to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) cows, pigs, sheep and poultry are among the world's greatest environmental threats and contribute a staggering 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions -- considerably more than transport, which emits 13%. The report, entitled Livestock's long shadow, says the meat industry is degrading land, contributing to the greenhouse effect, polluting water resources, and destroying biodiversity. Livestock use 30% of the earth's land surface and pastures for cattle use 70% of deforested areas in the Amazon. Massive deforestation is expected as meat consumption is expected to double by 2050 as the populations from emerging countries embrace an unhealthy "western diet" based on meat products and fast food. Curiously, the environmental threat caused by the meat industry has been mostly absent from the ongoing dialogue about climate change. Even the academy award-winning documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' failed to address the effect on global warming from the livestock industry.In the video Methane I combine found footage of factory farms on the web using the search tool in Flickr, YouTube and various blogs with an animation from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centre Scientific Visualisation Studio. The animation depicts the breakup of the Ayles Ice Shelf in Canada's Ellesmere Island on August 13, 2005. More than 90% of the ice cap has been lost. The piece shown in the animation is equivalent in size to approximately 11,000 football fields. The Canadian Arctic is experiencing the highest degree of climate change on the planet.methane is part of New Climates, an online exhibition of new and existing artworks responding to the relationship between art, global climate change and networked culture.http://www.newclimates.com/